1. Deterring Theft
There are several techniques for making secure the transport of notes, notably for bank notes.
Currently, bank notes are transported by means of fund transport companies and require the use of very expensive labour, and involve very high risks for the employees of the companies that are responsible for providing the security of this transport.
However, the transport of funds often suffers hold-ups, often violent, and in all cases which cause financial prejudice (for the merchant, the bank and the transport company).
Different solutions, in addition to making secure the transport vehicles (armour plating, arms, etc.), have been proposed, such as the use of special cases which deposit a special indelible ink onto the notes. However, this approach is costly and destructive.
The same problems exist, sometimes to a lesser extent, for other types of notes and tickets, such as those for shows or sporting events.
2. Deterring Counterfeits
Furthermore, to make the notes secure, the notes themselves have marks, which permit them to be authenticated and permit counterfeits to be restricted or prevented.
In general, the marking techniques used for notes are very advanced and are regularly updated according to the technical progress made in the field, with the use for example of serial numbers, water marks, holograms, magnetic strips, etc.
As concerns bank notes, several studies are currently in progress to provide them with a radio-identification system to mark the notes.
This system, commonly called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), is composed of markers, or radio-tags, themselves composed of a chip and an antenna, wherein the chip is not powered and uses the energy from a signal received to return a response signal and of receivers or readers.
In one of these studies, specially commissioned by the European Bank to make Euro notes more secure, it is thus proposed to incorporate radio-tags onto the bank notes, as an additional mark, thus permitting stolen notes to be located or counterfeit notes to be detected.
These obstacles to fraudulent reproduction are of course essential, to avoid the circulation of counterfeit money. They permit counterfeiters to be combated, but unfortunately increase the interest, for dishonest people, to steal real notes, notably during their transport or storage.